


Wandering

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Dark City (1998)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-20
Updated: 2008-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three months after the start of the City, Daniel Schreber needs to find out why some people aren't forgetting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wandering

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kittydesade

 

 

The Strangers wanted an answer. Schreber didn't have one.

Six years ago, there were no such things as wanderers, people whose brain couldn't adapt to the synthetic memories. Schreber didn't know anything about pools or moisture (but he knew it never rained), and though his body ached, he recognized dimly that it hadn't always been the case. It was the second cycle of the ninetieth night when things started to change, when a schoolteacher, wide eyed and sobbing, filled her chalkboard up with white, dusty spirals and threw herself off a roof. In his bound notebook, Schreber had described the woman's past as "neutral."

"I don't know . . . what she was thinking," he breathed, keeping one hand on the wooden desk behind him. It felt like rocks were tied to his legs, but he didn't think they'd let him sit down. The three of them had led him to that classroom, each of them a different height, all skinny and pale with awkward, shuffling gaits, as if they were walking for the first time in their lives. The City was so young back then. "I can only assume . . . she had psychotic break of . . . some sort. But her memories . . . her memories aren't . . ."

One of them had brought Schreber's notebook and was flipping through it carefully, page by page. "She was not scheduled for this, yes?"

"No one was scheduled . . . for a suicide," he said. "Not like this."

"Perhaps," said the one Schreber recognized as Mr. Hand, his fingers on the chalkboard, tracing the spirals, "humans are inherently miserable."

"It's probably a chemical . . . imbalance. Something that . . . didn't check out in the . . . the first round of tests."

"We're getting to be awfully sloppy, aren't we?"

It was the one with the notebook that spoke up, eyes watching Schreber from above the pages. He punctuated his sentence with a heavy, guttural _click_ , like a door hinge or a rattlesnake. Schreber wanted to curl up, to disappear into a closet or a box or a car, because this wasn't the first time he failed and he knew what it meant. 

"I wouldn't be too hard on him," said Mr. Hand. And then: "Do these mean anything to you?"

It took Scheber a moment to figure out what he was talking about. He was thinking about the punishment, thrown at his feet and then taken away like a breath of fresh air-- easily. He squinted ahead, looking at the chalkboard. "Spirals," he said. Oh.

"Do they _mean_ anything?"

"Nothing specific," he said, but he wasn't sure. With all his memories tucked away in a test tube somewhere, he was never sure of anything anymore. "It's like-- " He thought. "Like you're . . . dizzy, or . . ." Hypnosis, he almost said. Spirals spinning around in circles. Optical illusions. Mind tricks.

Mind tricks.

"I . . . don't know," he finished. "I really don't. It's like-- . . . she was obviously disturbed."

"Obviously," said the third Stranger, who had been quiet up until now. He stretched out the fingers on his left hand. "Our doctor doesn't belong here, yes? He isn't a help."

The Stranger grabbed Schreber's arm roughly, pulling his weight from the desk. Schreber stumbled. The Stranger held him steady. He was going back to the lab, back to where they still had to seal up the door with bricks to keep him in, where he spent his life between midnight and midnight making lives for other people. 

"I like them," said Mr. Hand. With each spiral he traced, he blew the chalk dust off his finger, whistling like a wind chime. "Spirals."

\--

They expected him to interview the woman's husband before eight. Five members of the force had been altered to think that Schreber was a psychiatrist for the police-- a near and dear friend of the force-- and as long as he stuck with them, he couldn't go wrong. He arrived at the apartment complex at half-past six with two detectives, well-dressed and fully prepared to deal with the widower, whatever state he might be in. One of the detectives was a man in his early thirties, maybe, with short, curly brown hair and large, sunken eyes. He had a way of watching people out of the corner of his eyes while he spoke to them, the rest of his attention somewhere else. Crowds. Traffic. He kept his hands in his pockets. His partner was suffering from a cold, and kept sniffling and wiping his nose on his suit and asking if Schreber had any tissues or cigarettes.

"Cigarettes?"

"No, yeah," said the red-nosed detective, hands fumbling through his hair. "Yeah, I mean, it's like a comfort thing. It probably doesn't make any sense, but when I'm like this, I really gotta smoke. It's like-- mental health reasons."

"No," Schreber breathed." I'm . . . sorry, but I don't . . ."

"No, of course not, Billy." It sounded like he was remembering for the first time, and chances are he was probably was. It was a hesitance Schreber was used to hearing. "You've got your-- you know-- your whole breathing thing, but I figured I might as well--"

"Shut up, would you?" It was the other man, the one with the large eyes. He rolled his shoulders. "We don't need to hear about your filthy habits, or whatever the hell you're going on about this time."

The detective sniffled, wiping his nose with one arm while giving a resigned wave with the other. Schreber didn't know it, but six years from now, he'd be buying bread from this man, a Mr. Thomas Craft.

Six years from now, the other detective would be John Murdoch.

"So you about ready, Doc?" the future Murdoch asked, raising his eyebrows. "You're the one that counts here, not Detective Davis and his mental health."

"He's a shrink, ain't he?" asked Davis, soon to be Evans, eventually to be Craft. He sniffled.

"He isn't _yours_."

Schreber tightened his grip on the briefcase by his side. He knew he remembered to pack the audio recorder, setting it up to snag every last clue from the poor man he could get. He knew it was recording the conversation right now, and it made him nervous. The Strangers were going to listen to it. The Strangers would hear every little cough and screw-up and hesitation in his voice. He nodded firmly, realized it wouldn't be picked up by the device, and then said: "Yes. Yes, I'm . . . definitely ready, thank you."

"Great," he said, removing the crinkled address from his pocket. He led the way, up the twelve floors through a rickety, metal elevator and down the winding hallways that seemed to go on forever. Back then, Schreber wasn't really allowed in the City very often, and so he was always surprised by how crowded it felt. The walls were always so close together. The ceilings were always so low. Every time he came out into the streets, he thought about running, and every time he got there, he realized how hopeless it was.

"You okay?" asked Davis, watching Schreber watch the world around him.

"Yes," he said, a little too quickly. "Yes, it's just-- it's very . . . sad, what happened to his wife."

"You're telling me," said Murdoch, with a definite sense of finality, a definite since of _We're not going to talk about this right now_. Schreber figured he was the kind of guy who didn't get emotionally invested in his work, which was nice, because Schreber was on his way to being the same. Part of it frightened him, though, how much easier injections were now that he had been here for three months. He knew that he would be implanting the widower later that night with new memories, scrapping a failed experiment like any good scientist would. A blank slate. A blank chalkboard. The police officers would have to be altered too, of course, as would most of the people in the apartment complex. He walked down the hallway, watching the doors, wondering which names would have to be changed.

They came to the widower's apartment.

Murdoch was the one who knocked, his fist giving a sturdy _rat-tap-tap_ on the wooden door-- and again, ten seconds later, when there was no response. "It's the police," he said, loud enough that he could be heard through the door. A couple of the neighbors peaked their heads out down the hall, curious, and Schreber averted his eyes.

But the widower didn't take very long. After the second knock, there was a series of clicks behind the door before it slid inwards.

"Come in," he said. He sounded tired, but otherwise all right. He was dressed in a blue striped collar shirt and slacks. He was a newspaperman, but the paper had given him some time off to get back on track. This week, his name was Jeremy Stevens.

"Thank you," said Murdoch curtly. He stepped inside first. Davis followed him, and Schreber came behind, not watching anyone, just keeping his eyes down on the grey linoleum floor, the way he moved when the Strangers were guiding him. "How are you doing this evening, Mr. Stevens?"

"Fine," the man replied. And then: "I mean, as well as can be expected. Do you wanna sit down?"

"Sure," said Murdoch, taking a seat at the worn, grey couch. Davis sat next to him, and Schreber took one of the chairs, resting his briefcase against the side of a nearby bookcase. It was a little crowded where he was sitting, actually. It felt like the bookcase was part of the older model, perhaps from when the room was larger. The widower took a chair from the dining room table.

"You already sent some guys," he said, after he had sat down. "I mean, I already got the interrogation, the whole business."

"There's something new this time," said Murdoch, signaling to Schreber. "We figured you could talk."

"I'm a psychiatrist," Schreber cut in, sensing the man's confusion, or at least expecting it. "I was hoping . . . I could ask you . . . a few questions."

"I already got that, too," he said, raising an eyebrow. He fidgeted with end of his sleeve, but he didn't lower his eyes. He wasn't nervous. "You're gonna ask me if I saw this coming."

"Did you?" Schreber asked.

"Same thing I told the others." He let go of his sleeve "Yeah. Yeah, I thought I did. But you don't _know_ these things."

"You don't," Schreber breathed, but this wasn't what he came here to talk about, not really. "Mr. Stevens, how was your . . . relationship with your . . . wife?"

"For Christ's sake." He didn't say it with any real vehemence-- just a dull frustration. "Don't you guys compare notes?"

Murdoch rolled his shoulders again. Davis was sniffling quietly, watching the clock, but also looking a little confused, for whatever reason. Schreber touched his briefcase. Felt his fingers against the leather.

"Please," Schreber said, and he felt like he might actually be pleading. This was important.

Stevens sighed. "Okay," he said. "Okay. No, me and my wife, we had an okay relationship. We weren't crazy in love. I mean, we weren't newlyweds, but I did my best to keep her happy."

"And were you happy, Mr. Stevens?"

"I guess," he said, after a pause. "No, I was happy. But it's weird, you know. Now that she's gone, it doesn't feel like we were ever really together. It's like-- it's like it was some other life. Like a dream."

This was the first time Schreber heard someone say this.

The second time, he was behind someone at the deli, and the man behind the counter and the nice lady with the polka-dotted jacket were talking about their childhoods, about how they felt more like video-recordings than reality. The third time, he was on the subway, and the fourth time was after the City had ended and he passed by a group of old men, huddled together on the stoops of the church, trying to figure out what went wrong.

"I understand," he said, because he wasn't sure what else he _could_ say. He pursed his lips. "And what about . . . the spirals?" He was certain there had to be some greater meaning behind that, something Stevens had seen or heard or remembered.

"What spirals?" he asked.

They didn't talk for very long. The detectives had a schedule, of course, and the man had already gone through this before, and couldn't they just leave him for now? Murdoch agreed, said that they didn't need to do this again, and so the three of them left, down through the winding apartment complex and into the streets.

Davis was still looking confused, though, or maybe worried. Schreber wanted to believe he was perceptive about these kinds of things, and so he nudged him weakly while Murdoch was up ahead.

"Are you . . . all right?" he asked, practically a whisper.

"It's funny," said Davis, keeping his voice low, "but I thought we were the first guys to interrogate him."

\--

They were the first ones to interrogate him.

Schreber had it in writing. Detective Charles Davis and Detective James Rizzo (soon to be John Murdoch) were assigned to the case. No one else had talked the widower.

He thought about what this meant, frantically, as he dug through the files in his lab. It didn't make any sense that someone would be posing as a police officer, or that the Strangers went on without telling him. But what else was it? He remembered Murdoch in that room, telling the man that yes, they were very sorry about wasting his time, and they were here because they had something _new_ \--

Forty-five minutes later, and Schreber had the confirmation he needed. Three weeks ago, Jeremy Stevens was George Worth, a construction worker with a brother named Dick who drove his car into the bank the night his wife left him. The police had come to talk to Stevens then too, asking him if he saw it coming, asking him about his relationship with his brother. The Strangers knew the brother's wife would be leaving him, and that he would die, and so they never bothered getting Schreber involved. But the detectives were there. The ones assigned to the case were Aaron Trenn and Ben Cole.

Ben Cole was James Rizzo. James Rizzo was John Murdoch.

Of course, he thought, energy flowing through his veins and down to his fingertips. Of _course_. Past lives were blurring together. Stevens remembered the detectives from before. Murdoch remembered too, and that's why he hadn't said anything. Some people's minds were stronger than the drugs, able to surpass them for one reason or another. It was a thought that hadn't even occurred to him. He always assumed that he could do nothing-- he was just one man, after all-- but if the Strangers were _failing_ , maybe they had a chance.

He was actually smiling when the Strangers came to pick him up for the midnight tuning. He couldn't remember the last time he smiled.

"We were hoping we could listen to what you found today, yes?" said Mr. Hand, once the air grew cold and all the cars and trains had stopped. He walked stiffly, leading the way down through the streets. Schreber followed, flanked by two Strangers. He had forty-one memories to alter today.

"I told you," he said, still riding on his earlier confidence, "there wasn't . . . anything. He said she seemed depressed. Hysterical. That's all."

"Nothing about _spirals_?"

"No," he said, which was true, at least. "It was simply . . . a product of her mind. Nothing for you to . . . worry about, Mr. Hand. Not a problem."

"In any case," said Mr. Hand, "we would like to hear it. Before you implant the new memories, perhaps?" 

Schreber laughed-- or tried to, anyway. His body hurt, and the stress was slipping back into his mind and stomach. It was a delicate situation. If the Strangers heard-- if the Strangers _knew_ , if they put two and two together--

"Of course," he breathed, letting his smile fade. "Before the . . . new memories, yes."

The Strangers by his sides smiled, and he could tell that Mr. Hand was smiling, too, from the sound of his voice. "Such a well-behaved doctor."

They came to the apartment complex again. It was relatively unchanged from the tuning, but now it had an extra floor, wedged between the ninth and tenth. The twelve stories had become thirteen, which Schreber thought was a sickening omen, but he couldn't quite remember why. Eventually, they came to the floor below Stevens. A couple of people were out in the hallway, slumped against the walls. One of them had sagged down to the ground, head lolled forward, and the Strangers paused to see who he was.

Schreber ducked into the elevator.

He didn't have a plan. All he knew was that he wanted to do _something_ , upset the balance somehow before the Strangers realized he had slipped away and where he was going. He could tell Stevens everything. He could have an ally. He could make sure Stevens said what he _meant_ and that they actually had a fighting chance. He got out of the elevator and then stumbled down to Stevens' room, fumbling with the lock and closing it behind him. Stevens was lying on his couch, asleep like all the others.

Schreber grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

And shook him.

"Please," he said, and this time, he was pretty sure he was pleading. He dropped his briefcase by the chair, using both hands now. "Please . . . Mr. Stevens . . . Mr. Worth . . . whoever you are."

But Stevens wasn't waking up. Schreber could hear the Strangers rustling down the hallway. He thought about taking Stevens down the fire escape, but there was no way he could hold him and no way he could run. He thought about burning the tapes in the oven. 

Stevens stirred.

"Ah?" he said, opening his eyes.

"Mr. Stevens," Schreber said. He spoke so frantically that he could hardly find time to breathe, but he didn't think it mattered. "What I'm about to tell you is very important, so you're going to have to _listen_ \--"

But the door snapped open with a monstrous _crack_ as it slammed against the wall. Schreber didn't have time to think before he was in the air, careening into the bookshelf behind him, lifted from the ground with hardly any effort before the Strangers even reached him. He slammed into it hard and then hit the floor, the shelf wobbling and then falling, missing his body but crashing down onto the lower half of his leg.

He saw shapes and colors. He tried to breathe, but the only thing that came out was cough after cough, the rhythm matching the skips in his heartbeat. The pain in his leg was _screaming_ and he was sure he heard it snap, sure that it could explain the numbness in his fingers, the vertigo. His glasses had fallen off, and through his blurry vision, he could see the Strangers descend on Stevens.

And then there was screaming.

It was Stevens. Half asleep, he hadn't been able to move fast enough. Schreber could see the Strangers with what he thought were the blurs of knives, stabbing into the man's body again and again. Screams became gurgles, became silence, became the sounds of Schreber's frantic breathing, caught underneath the bookshelf.

(A blank slate. A blank chalkboard.)

When the Strangers were done with him, they turned to Schreber, as impassive as ever.

"Our doctor could be the murderer."

No, Schreber wanted to say, but he couldn't form the words. With his glasses off, Stevens looked like someone's laundry piled on the ground. Schreber could still see the blood.

"A murder-suicide," another suggested, twirling the knife experimentally in his fingers. "Twice as efficient."

Schreber's hands were drenched in sweat. His whole body was shaking. Even if he got out from under the bookshelf, there was no way he could run. He was going to die. 

He had to escape. 

"What do you say, Doctor?"

"H-He was a stray," Schreber spit out, his voice so hoarse he could hardly recognize it. "He was onto your . . . to _our_ experiment. I . . . I needed proof, I wanted him awake . . . I wanted to stop him. He was risking . . . _everything_."

"You woke him up," said one of the Strangers, hands behind his back.

"A very poor choice," said another.

"And how do we know we can believe you?" asked Mr. Hand, stepping forward. "How do we know you're on our side?"

"There is . . . no . . . other side," Schreber said. "There is . . . nothing that isn't yours here."

Mr. Hand kneeled down to Schreber's level, bending his knees very carefully so that he wouldn't fall over. He extended his hand, touching Schreber's cheek. Schreber flinched but didn't move away. "You're right," he said. "You're very right."

Schreber closed his eyes. He could die now, or he could continue to live as a traitor. It was in their hands.

(He didn't know which one he preferred.)

With his eyes closed, he could hear them to start to click again. Chattering. Considering.

"We'll continue to use him," said Mr. Hand, withdrawing his fingers. "But the doctor must first be punished, yes?"

Schreber kept his eyes closed.

\--

The pain was so much that after a while he stopped feeling it, stopped registering all the kicks and broken fingers and shifts in the lighting. When it was over, they took him back to his lab and left him on a cot. They gave him a glass of water and promised to send a doctor later. A reward for all his services.

He wasn't sure how he made it to the bathroom, but he did, somehow, tripping over his leg and banging his knees on the tile when he finally fell in front of the toilet, dry heaving. He thought about Stevens, the way he had fidgeted with his sleeves while they talked to him, how he talked about things he shouldn't have remembered, and how Schreber would never know _why_ he remembered, or if he even actually did.

He mourned. Stevens. His failed heroism. Humanity, trapped here forever, doomed to lose whatever history it had left. 

And then he remembered Murdoch.

His briefcase, he thought suddenly, panic hitting him again. Where was it? The Strangers hadn't taken it back with him. He remembered taking it into Stevens' apartment, resting it in the same place he had placed it earlier that night and--

The bookcase. The bookcase had fallen. The suitcase was under it. The audiotapes were in the suitcase.

He had a chance.

He had an answer.

He started laughing from his place by the floor, the laughter becoming wheezes when his body starting aching again, from his fingers down to his broken ankle. They didn't know about Murdoch. He wouldn't be able to contact him, not now, but there was always a possibility he would wake up all by himself. There was a possibility that other people would wake up, too, and when they did, if Schreber was there to find them. . .

He tried to get off the floor, but at that point, he was too exhausted. He stared up at the ceiling instead of sleeping, listening to the sounds of the city starting up again.

He was one man, but that didn't matter. 

 


End file.
